


Set Fire to the Rain

by Starbird



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Mission Gone Wrong, Rebelcaptain - Freeform, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-05
Updated: 2017-10-10
Packaged: 2019-01-09 13:44:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12277743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Starbird/pseuds/Starbird
Summary: On a pitch black night during a torrential rainstorm, Jyn suffers a grievous injury, and Cassian can’t get there in time to stop it.





	1. Part I

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from Adele’s song.
> 
> Warning: This isn’t a happy piece.

Cassian Andor is too late.

His palms are flat on top of the slick roof, and then his boots are kicking at the brick wall to launch him up and over – the top rungs of the fire escape had rusted through long ago – but he can already tell he’s too late.

The rain is coming down so thick, it’s Eadu all over again. It’s all he can hear, except for the engines of the patrol craft searching for him and Jyn, crisscrossing through this part of the neighborhood on their quest to find the rebels they’d lost. The searchlight of one comes too close to Cassian, and his eyes search out a target of their own – protection – but find nothing.

Shots pepper the duracrete, sending up sprays of rainwater into his face, and he’s already in a crouch and firing a direct shot back at the gunman, blaster bolt sizzling through the droplets coming down. It takes the shooter out, and a second shot takes the pilot. The craft veers out of control, spinning around on its last course until it bangs into something and finally explodes below.

Cassian is still too late.

Their enemies are already gone by the time he reaches Jyn, and she is already quiet.

The rain continues to pound the duracrete.

“I’m here,” he says to her as his hand searches out hers in the dark, and his voice might as well be a whisper in this storm. “I’m sorry it took me so long. It’s okay.”

She doesn’t respond, and he already felt chilly enough from the storm, chillier still when he saw her lying motionless and quiet on the rooftop, and another chill sneaks over him.

He’s afraid to move her.

“It was that platoon,” he says to her, running his fingertips down her cheek, tracing the rivulets made by the rain. Carefully, he slides his arms under her knees and shoulders and pulls her limp body onto his lap. “The one with that idiot lieutenant who – ”

Cassian stops in the middle of his sentence. He had reached up to push away a lock of hair that the rain had divided to either side of her nose, and he’d felt something hard and foreign in her belly.

He looks down, and in the bare light of the few stars, he sees a darker shape. An outline. One he knows.

Cassian hurriedly digs out a glowtorch, switches it on, and holds it up. There, plunged to the hilt in her lower belly, is a knife. Blood has soaked her clothing, and when Cassian runs the light up and down her body to check for other wounds, he sees her blood mixed with rainwater on his hand holding her shoulder.

Her blood is on his hands.

_It’s on his hands._

A whistling gust of wind slaps stinging drops into his face, and out of the corner of his eye, he sees a cyclone amidst the maelstrom in the city, navy blue and far enough away to not be a concern right now, but not too far that he can dismiss it entirely.

_I’m too late._

He thumbs on his comlink and calls for help. Their backup can be there in just a few minutes.

He hasn’t checked her pulse yet. He doesn't want to. She still hasn’t moved, unconscious or worse.

The storm intensifies, if that could even be possible, and he cradles her body to his, forehead to cold forehead, knees behind her back to support her, and he closes his eyes and thinks. He thinks of everything he did wrong tonight. He’d heard her call over the comlink, but he hadn’t moved fast enough. He’d run into the platoon, _and he hadn’t moved fast enough._

He’d been too late.

She’d called, and he hadn’t been there.

She’d called, and he hadn’t come back for her in time.

Cassian’s fingers dig into her shoulder as he forces himself to breathe through the unbearable moment. It lasts too long, stretching out into eternity before it gives way into the next moment, when the cycle starts all over again.

Jyn is so cold.

The whine of an engine grows steadily louder, and a light shines down on them. A rebel swings down from the craft along with webbing, and Cassian forces himself to stand. He and the other soldier – he doesn’t know the man’s name – secure Jyn to the webbing, careful of the wound, and the pilot begins to raise her up into the belly of the craft. Cassian watches, wishing he could pull that knife out and fix what was sliced open inside her, but knowing it would only make things worse. He feels a knife, too, pinprick sharp on his heart, twisting and digging into the softest part of it, into a trigger point, until the ache is so much he can’t see and can’t breathe.

The other rebel touches two fingers to his brow at Cassian, rises back up into the craft when the webbing comes back down, and then they’re gone.

Cassian watches until he can’t see the craft anymore. The rain continues to pour.

He doesn’t know where they’ll take Jyn for treatment. There is nothing he can do. He’s done everything he can.

_You didn’t do enough._

He stares at the ground. His torch is still on, and he can still see her blood. It’s smeared across his pants and chest. He wrings his soaking shirt out and sees the diluted red splash down onto the duracrete.

He turns away.

There is nothing more he can do.

He goes back to his ship, alone, and preps it for the jump to hyperspace and the return to base.

All he can do now is wait.

Alone in the quiet of the ship and the emptiness of space.


	2. Part II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cassian reunites with Jyn when she's in recovery after surgery.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I made you guys sad. Here's a follow-up I wrote specifically for you. :)

Cassian Andor isn’t too late this time.

In fact, he’s early.

Princess Leia had personally commed him Jyn’s whereabouts in time for him to change course and meet Jyn’s transport at the Nebulon-B medical frigate in orbit around the closest Alliance satellite base. Unfortunately, he’s early enough that there’s nothing he can do but continue to wait while Jyn is in surgery. Infuriatingly, due to a large amount of disorganized nonsense, nerfshit about “protecting the patient’s privacy,” and an admiral who runs his ship the complete opposite way than Cassian is used to, he isn’t allowed to wait anywhere near her until she’s out of surgery and stabilized.

This leaves him wanting to attack his own comrades, and he ends up getting written up for a minor infraction.

Finally, though, the medical student who is still completing her training and has taken pity on him (as well as confided her own frustration with the way the ship is run) and kept him in the loop, comms him and lets him know he can see Jyn. He thanks the student and turns the device off, heading toward her room.

Cassian has always hated medbays, but then, he doesn’t know anyone who likes them. Everything is so sterile, so white, so shiny and gleaming even though they’re in a war and the Alliance has no funds. It offers the illusion of perfection when everything inside the bay is falling apart. He has avoided medbays as much as possible, preferring instead to suffer with an injury or illness rather than go to one unless ordered to (as has happened on more than one occasion). When he sees Jyn lying on a bed, though, hooked up to beeping monitors, her chest rising and falling, he couldn’t be more grateful for medical facilities. He takes a seat on a rickety metal chair next to her, and clasps her hand.

She opens her eyes, green searching out his brown, and she smiles tiredly.

“You came back,” she says. Cassian’s hand tightens on hers.

“I always do,” he says. “I always will.”

“I know. I knew you would. I saw you…” She breaks off, as if the exertion of speaking is too much for her, and takes a few breaths before she continues. “I saw you on the ground when I was fighting the thugs off. I knew you were on your way. I just…couldn’t fight hard enough once they got the knives out, and it was so dark. I’m sorry.”

Cassian’s other hand immediately goes to her face. “It’s not your fault,” he says. “It’s _my_ fault. I should have been there sooner. I should have stopped it from happening. There are a thousand other things I should have done and didn’t.” He can’t look at her any longer, and his head drops in shame. He doesn’t deserve her. She doesn’t deserve _this_.

“Cassian, no,” she says, and he feels her hand on the back of his head. When he looks up again, there are tears in her eyes. “We both know the risks of fighting this war. It was just my turn this time.”

Cassian grips her hand harder and pulls it close to his chest. “I’ll never let it be your turn again.”

“And you? When it’s your turn?”

“Better mine than yours.”

“You’d want me to think I’ve lost you?”

He doesn’t have an answer to that. Instead, he bows his head over Jyn’s bruised and bloodied knuckles, and kisses them.

“How about,” she says, “it’s no one’s turn?”

Cassian gives her as much of a smile as he can muster right now, and he thinks he can live with that.


End file.
